WATCH: Here’s How Quickly The Hunter Can Become The Hunted

Hunting for wolves while riding snowmobiles brings with it a plethora of risks, including potentially having your arm or leg chewed off by one very angry animal or being killed outright.

A video published to YouTube last month depicted just a few of these risks.

In one particularly tense moment during the recording, the hunter fired at a wolf but failed to kill it immediately, only injuring it slightly. The irate canine then doubled back on the hunter with his jaws wide open.

We have Fast-forwarded to the 1:33 mark in this video to show you what happens.

***WARNING GRAPHIC MATERIAL… MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR SOME VIEWERS.. USE CAUTION WHEN VIEWING***

The wolf managed to use its teeth to get a grip on the hunter’s shotgun, which admittedly probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do; the next scene in the clip showed the wolf lying dead on the ground.

Because wolves share so much in common with domesticated dogs, animal-rights activists sometimes become angered when they learn about wolf hunting. It should be kept in mind, however, that such hunting serves an important purpose toward conservation.

Speaking about hunting in 2009, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin explained that if wolf populations were not kept in check by purposeful hunting, large problems would ensue not only for her human constituents but for her animal ones as well.

“Alaskans depend on wildlife for food and cultural practices which can’t be sustained when predators (wolves) are allowed to decimate moose and caribou populations,” she said, according to a Newsweek report.

And therein lies the reason for such hunting — the long-term “conservation” of an ecosystem.

In his 2002 book “In Nature’s Interest,” environmental ethics philosopher Gary E. Varner explained that hunting “designed to secure the aggregate welfare of the target species, the integrity of its ecosystem, or both” is good, according to Scientific American.

Assuming these were the reasons the gentlemen pictured in the video were hunting for wolves, then they were completely in the right and deserved zero criticism.

As for the wolves that were targeted, they definitely deserved respect, as they were no doubt some very ferocious beasts.

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